The Stuff You Need to Know

In Throwback Thursday, we're looking back at the articles we're most proud of from the first ten years of The Solid Signal Blog.

Every story has a beginning. We launched our Xtreme Signal line of antennas in 2014 with just two models, the HD1080X and HD8200XL. Since then, we've added the exclusive, award-winning HDB2X, HDB4X, HDB8X, and HDB91X to round out the line and give you top performance no matter how far from the towers you are. (The HD1080X and other models we've launched have not quite lived up to standards so we discontinued them.)

Today, there's a selection of Xtreme Signal antennas for everyone, but back in 2014 no one knew about this new brand. So we reached out to partners throughout the country to test the new products and the verdicts were always the same -- looks great, performs great.

Today Xtreme Signal is one of the top performing brands of antennas in the US, and it's all because of millions of satisfied customers. But... it all started back in '14 with just two antenna models. Shop now for the amazing Xtreme Signal antennas!

It didn't exactly light up the world like some people thought it did. DIRECTV's H44 Genie Lite is a smallish receiver (a little bigger than an H24) that can be converted to a full Genie with the addition of a branded hard drive. It sounds like a good idea, and after all DISH has had its 211 and 311 receivers for years that you can add a hard drive to. The devil's in the details, though, and between the fact that you have to use DIRECTV's specific hard drive and the fact that the Genie Lite doesn't work with older dishes, it's been a hard sell.

While we still offer them at Solid Signal, we've been told that the H44 idea was nice but they're not moving ahead with new convertible receivers like that when current supplies of the Genie Lite are exhausted.

If you have the H44, however, you'll want to know that it will eventually be getting the new user interface. Love it or hate it, it's the future of DIRECTV and AT&T and it will be rolling out to all Genies except the now-obsolete HR34.

Editor's note: I know, I didn't include the H44 in my initial review of the user interface. That's my error and doesn't mean the H44 won't get the new menus.

DIRECTV's biggest change in six years is rolling out slowly and you may not even see it until February. There were some early rumors that it was being "rolled back" but those ended up being false. Everyone will eventually get these new menus, and DIRECTV customer care representatives will be available for comments if you find that you're not completely satisfied.

On November 1 of this year... AT&T dropped the biggest bombshell in Genie history on those with H44, HR44, HR54 and HS17 boxes. It's a completely new interface from top to bottom, and it's going to be a big change to people who have spent the last six years learning and
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I want to thank the dozens of helpful blog readers who pointed me to various articles about HDMI 2.1 yesterday. I figured, since the world won't need this standard for about 10 years, I had a minute to think about what I'm going to write about it.

We're always improving our test procedures at Solid Signal and starting with the latest crop of antennas, we're giving you even more tools to try to choose the best antenna for you.

As much as I'd like it, the budget just doesn't include $100k for a proper anechoic chamber and test gear, so I'm doing the next best thing - instrumented real world testing. The result tells you how well all our antennas
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One of the best things about DIRECTV's SWM technology is its flexibility. You absolutely can put one splitter after another, meaning that you can put more than one receiver in the same room, or run one line from your "master" splitter to another part of the house and split it from there. There are just a few things you need to consider.
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VHF-Low, or as regular people call it, TV channels 2-6, used to be prime real estate for TV watchers. All the good channels were there. It's where you wanted to be, whether you were the CBS channel in Los Angeles or the ABC channel in Philadelphia. It was a coveted address in the 20th century.
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